Bengaluru has Third Highest Number of Startups GloballyHot Buzz

Besides Silicon Valley and London, Bengaluru has the third highest number of startups in the world, according to a report by trade body Nasscom released on Thursday and India's startup ecosystem is the world's third largest, the report said.

Amid 2013-2018, India saw between 7200-7700 startups starting, and the overall base is growing at 12-15 percent, the report said.

The Indian startup ecosystem generated 40,000 direct jobs in 2018 alone taking the total employment in the segment to 1.6-1.7 lakh, Times of India said in its report adding another 4-5 lakh people are estimated to be employed indirectly.

In 2018 alone, more than 1200 startups began across India and eight startups became a unicorn in the year, the highest in any single year, Nasscom said.

Between January and September 2018, Indian startups received $4.3 billion funds, which is over 100 percent year on year growth which means each deal had an average of $9.4 million funding per deal, an increase of 144 percent over 2017. In the current year, seed stage funding went down 21 percent.

The year 2018 was likewise good for mergers and acquisitions as there were over 70 such activities which are a 15 percent rise over 2017, Nasscom said.

As far as startup ecosystem enablers are concerned, India has more than 210 active accelerators/ incubators, which is an 11 percent increase when compared to 2017.

In the last three years, over 35 corporate accelerators/incubators have been started by corporate firms in India. There are as well over 14 international startup exchange missions active in India as of 2018.

According to Nasscom, 50 percent of all startups in India consists of Enterprise Software, FinTech, and HealthTech leading verticals, while Advanced Tech startups grew over 50 percent in the last year alone.

Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and IoT (Internet of Things) startups are witnessing fastest adoption across industry verticals, Nasscom said in its report.